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Animals for meat and egg production
Each year 50 billion animals are slaughtered for food world wide to feed a population of 6.4 billion people.
In addition to this more than 5 billion hens are kept to lay eggs, most of these live in tiny battery cages. Each hen has less than an A4 sheet of paper in space in which to spend her miserable life. (See battery hen page)
Alternatively, you can visit www.freebetty.com for more detailed information.
Australia
In Australia there are some 500 million production animals including 11 million laying hens. Australia consumes 420 million meat chickens, 27 million sheep, 8.8 million cattle, 7.4 million turkeys, 5.7 million pigs, 4.5 million ducks, 550,000 goats, 76,000 horses, donkeys and mules (for meat export) and an unknown number of rabbits and geese each year.
Most of these animals (hens, chickens, pigs, turkeys, ducks and rabbits) come from intensive (or factory) farms they are crammed into dark windowless sheds for their whole lives, seeing the sun for the first and last time the day they go to be killed for food.
Factory farming usually involves:
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keeping animals crowded together in sheds;
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confining them in small cages;
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using antibiotics to stop the spread of disease caused by overcrowding and to promote faster growth;
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selective breeding for un naturally fast growth resulting in bone deformities, fractures, dislocations and disease; and
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mutilations such as teeth, tail or partial beak removal as the stress from over crowding causes fighting. These procedures are performed without anaesthetic.
These animals have been excluded from the protection of our animal welfare legislation. Because of this millions of farm animals in this country daily endure shocking living conditions and acts of terrible cruelty that would be illegal if they were companion animals.
Industry and codes of practise for the welfare of animals allow them to be incarcerated in cages so small they are unable to walk or even turn around for their whole lives. (See Tasmania´s Pig Industry page)
Alternatively, you can visit www.savebabe.com or www.animalsaustralia.org for more detailed information
Farm Animals and the Environment
An area the size of ten football ovals (10 hectares) can produce enough;
- meat to feed 2 people.
- maise to feed 10 people.
- grain to feed 24 people.
- soya to feed 61 people.
If you take 7kg of vegetable protein and feed it to a cow you end up with just 1kg of meat protein at the end.
38% of the world´s grain is fed to farmed animals.
The growing of animals for meat in Australia uses twice the water of rice production here annually. Dairy production uses even more water again while grain production uses a mere fraction of the amount of water.
Much of the water involved in the meat industry ends up seriously polluted and needs treatment. Abattoir waste water and piggery effluent is some of the most highly polluted water in the world requiring extensive treatment before release or reuse.
Livestock produce up to 85 million tonnes of the total 4-600 million tonnes of methane produced every year. Methane is a greenhouse gas and is 23 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
The 2007 United Nations Report ´Livestocks Long Shaddow´ reported that gasses produced by the livestock trade are the largest single source of methane on our planet.
The report also said that gas emissions from livestock exceed that caused by every car, every truck,every ship, every train and every aero plane on the planet.
Diet
The myth that animal protein is essential in the human diet was based on studies in rats. The World Health Organisation revised its protein scoring tables in 1991 after research on humans demonstrated that plant protein was perfectly adequate.
Decades of good research shows that eating a whole foods plant based diet, minimising refined foods, salt and animal fat, avoiding meat, eggs and dairy products leads to the greatest health and the lowest incidence of heart disease, cancer and other western life style induced diseases.
Reducing or eliminating animal products in your diet is the most effective way you can reduce your environmental footprint on the planet.
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